Einherjar

25

"So you singlehandedly stopped five robbers?" Blader asked Sodull after the recruit finished giving a brief explanation for why the locals thought so highly of him. "How?"

"With a bow and some well-placed arrows," Sodull said with a smirk. "Clambered up to the rooftops and rained judgement down into their midst." He leaned back in his chair, taking a bite out of a slice of the good thick bread slathered with butter, and chewed as Erik, Blader, Skalfi, and Wolfsted looked at him, perplexed.

"You did what now?" Erik asked after the brief silence.

Sodull swallowed his bite. One of the local families had supplied them with slices of cold chicken, a good loaf of bread, half a ball of butter, and a thick hunk of cheese for their meal, complete with glasses of cold milk. Apparently, he was right in believing he was well thought of here.

"I shot them with my bow," Sodull said, indicating the weapon sitting with his sheathed sword and shield.

"Where did you get a bow?" Skalfi asked. "We only came in here with our personal weapons and you didn't have a bow."

"Well, I got the bow from the kidnapper," Sodull explained.

"What kidnapper?" Wolfsted asked. "Start from the beginning."

Sodull then launched into his tale about another village, this time on the edge of a forest, where two young children had been kidnapped and taken into the woods. He had ventured into the forest to recover them, killing the kidnapper and taking his bow and quiver full of arrows before he had then returned the children to their grateful parents. Before moving on to this village, he had practiced with the bow to improve his accuracy.

On reaching this village, Sodull had barely arrived before a gang of outlaws had ridden down the main street. He had quickly concealed himself, climbing up onto a rooftop to get a better view of them. It hadn't taken him long to either kill or injure the robbers with the bow and arrows, and the injured ones were finished off by the people of the village. Sodull was immediately hailed as a hero.

"And that was yesterday," he finished. "I decided to spend some time here before moving on to save the next village, but then you four showed up. What have you been up to?"

So Skalfi, Wolfsted, Blader, and Erik told Sodull their stories, about Jotunheim, the tunnels, the dwarves, the dragon, and Brunna. Erik's voice went low when he talked about his ally. "She was a good einherjar. She shouldn't have died." Then Blader mentioned the strange figure on the throne and what he had said to him.

Sodull frowned. "General Thrym was killed by Dyr Gunar?"

Blader nodded and briefly gave an overview of the conversation he had had with Erik, Skalfi, and Wolfsted concerning that subject. "We think it was deliberate that no one was made aware of how my grandfather died."

"What I want to know is why that voice talked to you," Sodull said, his brow furrowing thoughtfully. "If no one knows this, except for the high ups of the einherjar and the Valkyries, and the gods of course, then why tell you? You don't know, presumably, so why point this out to you?"

Blader frowned. "That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that."

"The Reenactment seems to be faulty," Skalfi said with a nod, Erik nodding with her. "It doesn't look like the seers orchestrated this."

Wolfsted grimaced. "So who is also controlling this Reenactment beside the seers?"

Skalfi glanced at Blader and he knew she was thinking about the overheard meeting between the gods. But Sodull and Erik didn't know about the meeting, about what was discussed there. Only Wolfsted, Skalfi, and Blader knew.